Unidentified Flying Spheres: The UFS Issue

UFOs are very often described as saucer-shaped, as cigar-shaped, and as triangular-shaped. Then, there are those UFOs that can only be described as spheres. In his 1991 book, Alien Liaison, UFO authority Timothy Good described an intriguing affair which took place in the latter part of the 1950s. The location was South Australia. As for the source, he had a very credible background: he was a radio technician employed at the Weapons Research Establishment, Salisbury, South Australia. While the man wasn’t entirely sure of the year of the incident, he was able to narrow it down to 1958 or 1959. It involved the recovery of a curious sphere on the range itself. Good was told: “It was a sphere about 2 feet 9 inches in diameter. Its color was a mid-gray metallic, somewhat darkened by extreme heat…We tried to cut it, and could not even mark it with hand tools – saws, drills, hammers, chisels – nothing.”

According to Good’s informant, the American military claimed the sphere, stating that it originated with their space program. The result: it was sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio for inspection. Good’s source was not entirely sure that the sphere was terrestrial in origin. He told Good: “Perhaps this is foolish, but for many years now I have believed that what we held in those several days was not merely space debris, was perhaps not even some material left by a UFO, but that it was perhaps some form of UFO itself.”

Moving on, and thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, New Zealand’s Joint Intelligence Bureau – a part of the Ministry of Defense – has declassified a number of files showing that more than a few such spheres were found on New Zealand soil between 1963 and 1972. Each and every one was handed over to the American military, after they stated they originated – again – with the U.S. space program. They were all around two-feet in diameter and, as well as in New Zealand, others were found in various parts of Australia.

As Ryan Wood noted in his 2005 book, Majic Eyes Only: “By far the most interesting piece of data related to this affair can be found in a solitary newspaper clipping contained within the archives of New Zealand’s JIB. Dating from 1972, it refers to a ‘sphere crash’ on Australian territory in 1963. According to the report, two spheres had been recovered approximately one hundred and fifty miles north of Broken Hill, and the Broken Hill police had arranged for the objects to be flown to the National Weapons Research Establishment (NWRE) at Adelaide for examination. Unfortunately for the police, the pilot of the aircraft refused to allow the mysterious spheres on board his aircraft lest they explode. Ultimately, the police were forced to transfer the spheres by road. However, after examination by specialist staff at the NWRE, it was determined that the spheres were neither Soviet nor American in origin. From where did they originate? The newspaper did not know, and the authorities were not, and are still not to this day, saying anything.”

Documents released into the public domain by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency – which date from 1979 – reveal that in early August of that year, “the Embassy here received information that a strange object had been found on a farm near Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Source stated that the object was about 70 centimeters in diameter and two meters in circumference with a hole in one side and a metal skin covering of approx one-half inch thickness. Later the object was described as ‘about three times the size of a basketball.'”

DIA files add the following: “A second fireball fell from the sky early in the morning of the same day that the first one was found near Cotoca. This second one was found 200 kilometers north of the city of Santa Cruz on the farm of Juan Saavedra by the Campesino Gonzalo Menacho Viveras. The place is in the area of Buen Retiro near the Yapacane River. According to the information given by the Campesino, around 12:30 a.m. on Friday last week he heard a loud whistling sound and saw a fireball followed by an explosion. He said that the next evening a silent aircraft that had three lights was flying over the explosion area.”

And there is also this from the DIA: “After dawn on Friday morning the Campesino started looking around the area of the impact and found a sphere. As it was not heavy, he took it home where he kept it until his friend, Nataniel Mendez Hurtado, learned of the other sphere in Cotoca and passed on information concerning this second sphere. The mystery of finding these two spheres, exactly alike, is that according to the witnesses they were fireballs. That is to say that these spheres became real balls of fire when they entered the atmosphere because of the friction and after a high speed fall they hit the ground. However, in the area where they’ve been found, there were no signs of the impact and looks as though the spheres landed smoothly.”

Of course, logic dictates that all of these spheres were very likely terrestrial in origin – and linked to early space-based tests and operations – just as the U.S. military said they were. On the other hand, we do have a few curious things to ponder upon, such as (A) the words of the radio technician from the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury, Australia, who suspected the sphere he saw was “some form of UFO itself;” (B) the DIA’s reference to the Bolivian spheres having “landed smoothly;” and (C) the weird presence in the Bolivian case of a “silent aircraft.”

Nick Redfern works full time as a writer, lecturer, and journalist. He writes about a wide range of unsolved mysteries, including Bigfoot, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, alien encounters, and government conspiracies. Nick has written 41 books, writes for Mysterious Universe and has appeared on numerous television shows on the The History Channel, National Geographic Channel and SyFy Channel.